Traveling and eating alone–don’t do it!

I tried something last night– I was getting hungry and starting to dread finding someplace to get takeout. I happened to be paying attention to the twitter stream for #msteched (all attendees) and one I created called #cdncrew (Canadians at TechEd) to find someone else who was hungry and wanted to eat. I hate eating alone on the road. Didn’t take long to stumble across and reply to the following:

One of the things that I really enjoy about this job is that I get to meet lots of great people from all over. But I’ve got a secret to share. Believe it or not – I actually lean more towards the introverted side of the equation when it comes to personalities. Don’t get me wrong – I love giving presentations in front of hundreds or thousands of people and showing things off on stage / performing in my house band – I’m cool with that. BUT – put me in a room with lots of people and tell me to make one on one small talk or go out and meet 10 new people – my stomach knots up. I’m far more comfortable with someone ELSE coming over and engaging me in conversation. It’s why I’m comfortable wearing my GreenHat so that when people see me/it from a distance, they’ll want to come over and say “hi” – which breaks the ice.

Long story short – Had a great dinner with Henry (@Boschkobi on twitter) an IT guy from Edmonton. What better place to have dinner then a wood fired microbrew pub – we’re Canadian, so anything with Lagers in the name has to be good, right?

Henry opted for an order of Onion Rings – I couldn’t resist the Lamb sliders.

We thought we were done, then Connie our waitress convinced us to get the deep fried cheesecake. Hey – she said it was good – and she was right.

Moral of the story – simple really. When you get the opportunity to get out of your comfort zone – do it. It gets easier every time and something that I’ve been talking about for a while is constantly trying to grow your professional network. Can’t think of a better way to do it while at a conference.

I got to meet Henry face to face, instead of just online. He taught me some tricks that his company is doing with SCCM and Windows 7 deployment that I wouldn’t have thought of myself (what? use SCCM completely and not use MDT at all?). I met another great Canadian Technology professional and we both got the chance to geek out over dinner – without having to eat alone.

Thanks Henry – I appreciate you taking the time to have dinner the other night!